A key development has been seen in issuance of diplomatic visas between Pakistan and India.
According to sources, Pakistan and India have issued 60 diplomatic visas to diplomats of each other. Details show that Pakistan has 35 diplomatic visas to Indian officials while India has issued 25 diplomatic visas to Pakistani officials.
Further review of this development reveals that Pakistan and India have issued these visas to junior diplomats and the administrative staff.
Sources say India has also issued visa to Pakistan’s new chargé d’affaires for India Saad Warraich.
The federal government had appointed Saad Warraich chargé d’affaires of Pakistan for India a few months ago. He has replaced Aizaz Khan as Chargé d’ Affaires at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi.
The development comes a few days after a top Pakistan official accused India of killing two Pakistani nationals on its soil.
The official cited what he called “a pattern” of alleged Indian assassination plots overseas and raising tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Syrus Sajjad Qazi said at a news briefing last week that Islamabad has “credible evidence” linking Indian agents to the killing of Muhammad Riaz in Azad Kashmir on September 8 last year and of Shahid Latif in Sialkot a month later.
“These were killings-for-hire cases involving a sophisticated international setup spread over multiple jurisdictions,” Qazi said.
He accused two Indian agents of recruiting assassins to kill the men – both slain in the vicinity of mosques – but did not provide further information about the victims or suggest why New Delhi might have targeted them.
Qazi compared the alleged killings in Pakistan to other purported recent Indian assassination plots in North America.
“They fit the pattern of similar cases which have come to light in other countries including Canada and the United States,” Qazi said. “Clearly the Indian network of extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings has become a global phenomenon.”
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) rejected Qazi’s allegations, calling them “Pakistan’s latest attempt at peddling false and malicious anti-India propaganda.”
